Medical Innovation Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord O'Donnell and Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope

Friday 24th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Donnell (CB)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, I am not a medic. I rise to speak because I think that this issue creates all sorts of problems and challenges in which my experience in public policy and economics can help. To me, what determines innovation is essentially economic. Economists have studied for a long time precisely how you get innovation in systems. I will not lecture noble Lords on the medical side. It is important that we operate with our heads, not our hearts, in this, so you will not get any emotional stories for me; I will be boringly analytical. I think that this is an issue about evidence-based policy.

We know that markets will not solve the issues that the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, raises in the Bill. The incentive structures are such that the pharma companies will go for those areas where they can sell large amounts of drugs. Rare cases will be problems. One issue I have as someone who cares enormously about evidence-based policy—I gave a lecture at the Royal Statistical Society earlier this week on this, when I went on at length, which I will not repeat—is how you generate the right amount of data to handle this problem. I received a briefing from the BMA which said that there was no evidence to support such things. Of course there was no evidence; that is the whole point. We have to find ways to generate evidence.

I strongly support the Bill. In that, I am with Sir Michael Rawlins, president of the Royal Society of Medicine and former head of NICE, who knows about the analysis, so I take the medic side as given. I am very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, has accepted the safeguards. If you believe, as I do, that the really important part of this is the generating of evidence, we need something in the Bill to state that we will record evidence and register it correctly. That makes a lot of sense, but as a good former civil servant, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply and hope that he will reassure me that there is an equivalent way to do that. If that is true and is as solid, I will accept that; but in its absence, we need to make sure that we learn, that we get every innovation documented so that we build up the evidence base. That is what this is about—innovating safely and successfully.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, whose experience in the area of public policy is well known. I have come late to consideration of the Bill. Regrettably, I could not make the debate at Second Reading. My interest in the subject was generated by a four-year period on the General Medical Council, which ended at the end of 2012. I was deeply sceptical about the Bill when I first read that the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, was proposing it. However, I pay tribute to those colleagues who have thought about the amendments and presented them. I am not a medical doctor; I trained as a pharmacist; but this has been a very good, easily understood, high-quality debate about the issues. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, because he has obviously been listening very carefully. He may even win my support, subject to one or two points that I will raise in a moment.

As a former business manager, I am prepared to accept the Saatchi-Keogh package, as it were, but I would not want to take a final decision on some of the other important amendments. I might support some of them on Report, but I do not think that this morning is a good time to do anything other than take a step forward with the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, with the help of Bruce Keogh. That would be in the best interests of the consideration of the Bill. I warmly accept the noble Lord’s change of heart, if that is not too strong a way to put it. The Bill is much better dealt with in this House than along the Corridor, because I have been along the Corridor and I know what happens there. This is a much better context in which to get the Bill as good as it can be before we send it there. I recognise that that was a big decision for him.

I would be much happier to vote for this package in its entirety if the noble Lord paid attention to five amendments. I have listened to the careful way in which they were presented this morning. The Turnberg Amendments 15 and 19 are very important for me, and the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, made an important case. If we do not capture the benefits, the Bill is not worth having. At the top of my Christmas list of five amendments are Amendments 15 and 19. Given the tone of the debate in the House, the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, may reflect that if he does not concede something in that direction he will find it difficult to persuade me that the Bill is worth having at all. Second on my list is Amendment 10, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, because I think reasonableness and proportionality are necessary in the Bill. The noble Lord made a concise and compelling case. The noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, dismissed it rather lightly, so I ask him to think again about Amendment 10. Amendment 17 concerns restrictions. I am very nervous about the Bill being applied to mental health, and I corroborate and underscore comments made by other colleagues. Lastly, Amendment 22, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Winston, would make it absolutely clear that there is no duty to innovate. That may seem irrelevant but it is important for the protection of doctors—and I say that as a former member of the General Medical Council.